it’s been a really long time since i last posted. summer came and we got busy. and then we moved. and fletcher started in a new school. and i’ve  been adjusting to working from a new studio. and we renovated a house (and still have the outside and some small paint projects to finish). and christmas came. and then new year’s. and now it’s mardi gras time! as a matter of fact, we are headed to parades tonight and tomorrow.

fletcher has been riding his bike all over town. we moved closer to downtown and closer to where all the new orleans action is and now we walk a lot of places. we love it. fletcher loves it.

here is a recent pic of fletcher, from this past week.

ok, so he’s not actually reading, but he does like to be read to and he will sit still long enough to read a few books. can’t ask for more, right? so much going on…and i haven’t updated in a long time. st. george’s school year is over and fletcher will be home for 5 weeks until the 2nd session of summer camp starts in july. in the meantime, fletcher and i are spending lots of quality time together and we are taking a road trip up to NYC next week to visit my family and attend terri’s (my cousin) wedding out on the island. i am planning out our trip and trying to map out where we’re going to stop along the way. however, i realize i need to be flexible since it’s hard to gage how long a 2.5 year old will sit in a car on a road trip. i do plan on taking him to the museums and parks once we’re in the city. i can’t wait. so much to do in NYC and there are so many fun parks to visit.

here’s a recent pic of photo reading…

Thanks to Andy, I slept in until almost 9 this morning. Andy took Fletcher to breakfast with his mother and then came home with a big bouquet of flowers and sweet card. What a wonderful way to wake up. There were so many flowers, that I was able to make 3 arrangements! Add to that, I also got an iPhone. Yippee!  Thanks Andy + Fletcher. I love you.

Of course I waited until 2 days before Easter to buy Fletcher an Easter basket and goodies. I didn’t want to go overboard with the candy, so I kept it simple with dark chocolates and 1 candy dispenser thingy. He was happy with it and ate all the candy as soon as he got the basket.

We had a yummy Easter dinner with Alesia, Brian, Mia + Josie and their family that was in from North Dakota + Arkansas. Alesia, being the good mom that she is, planned an Easter egg hunt for Mia + Fletcher. Thanks, Alesia!!

Tonight, I’ll be heading out to watch Andy play in the Volley-Bar National Championships at Coconut Beach. It was the strangest thing, March 21st, Frank Gordon texts Andy the morning of the tournament and wants to know if Andy wants to play THAT day. Andy says sure. As of that morning, they didn’t have a full team together. It was mostly 6’s, but you could play 4’s. They got together a team of 4’s. They end up winning the Bar Championship Qualifier! So tonight is the start of a 2 day event. Andy’s team of 4 is now a team of 6; they recruited 2 players from the team that lost to them in the finals. 

Last weekend, they went out to have a little practice session. I took Fletcher out there after his nap – mostly to play in the sand, but he ended up being interested in playing with daddy. I took some camera snapshots of them playing.

About 2 weeks ago, we hosted a birthday party for Fletcher’s cousins, Casey + Cooper.  They are 4 + 7, respectively. Chris, my brother in law (BIL), ordered a spacewalk. I didn’t know much about the details of the spacewalk other than it was to be delivered between 9-12 that Saturday. Around 7:30 am, the spacewalk delivery guys walk down our driveway to deliver the ginorous thing. I couldn’t believe how quickly they put this thing up. I was also excited because this meant we could play in before the party started (2pm) and before Fletcher’s nap (12pm). Fletcher really loved it. Andy + I had to take turns getting in there with him because it was exhausting. 2 year olds have A LOT of energy.

Below is one of the few pics I took at the party – that’s Claire in the blue shirt and Chris reaching over the kids. Birthday cake!!

Fletcher is a typical boy. Stereotypical, I should say. He loves planes, cars, trucks, getting dirty, the older ladies and all things sport. He might only be 2.5, but he knows the difference between a soccer ball, a football, a tennis ball, a baseball, a golf ball and a football. He understand the concept of playing each and he knows what to do with each of those balls. So if you have him a baseball, he would say, “I need a bat.”  Hand him a golf ball and he’ll say, “Where’s my golf club?”  I’m sure this behavior is typical of most boys.

This past Christmas, “Santa” brought Fletcher an outdoor golf game. It’s great for passing 15 minutes of time (his attention span is 15 mins and then he moves onto the next thing). We didn’t actually take it out of the box until last week and for more than 1 reason. Reason (1) at Christmas, he was still a little too young to play with it, (2) he had a ton of other toys to play with, (3) it contains a WMD (weapon of mass destruction): a golf club. Make that 2 gold clubs. Anything that can be swung, used to hurt someone else or something is called a WMD in our house. And we hide most of these things for as long as we can. So like I said, we finally took it out of the box and out it together (note: do not try to put together children’s toys after you’ve had a glass or two of wine – it will take twice as long). The good news: once it was together, Fletcher really liked it and played with it, see below:

Yeah, I don’t know why I have a blog, either. I never seem to write anything. I have good intentions to write, but it never seems to pan out. I’m either too tired/lazy or something comes up and I don’t have time. I guess it’s mostly a place for me to post pics of Fletcher and his progress.

This past weekend was somewhat busy; on Saturday, I went with Alesia (who just had her baby girl, Josie) to the Children’s Clothing Exchange. She came over to pick me up for 9, we had coffee at my house and got side-tracked by talking with Andy and ended up getting there at 9:45. There was a ton of stuff and it wouldn’t been awesome. If I had a girl. I have a 2 year old boy. And in case you don’t know – most 2 year old boys wear the crap out of their clothes; dirt, crayons, markers, food stains, spills from drinking mommy’s red wine (you get the picture) – all those things make it impossible to keep boys clothes clean, thus making it impossible to ever think of passing them onto another child. So yeah, I was able to pick up like 3 items for Fletcher. However, I did notice the older boy’s clothes were plentiful. Sigh, maybe I’ll  have better luck next year. 

So after our foray into the Children’s Exchange, we were a little hungry. We just happened to park right across the street from a little italian café, Il Posto - where they just happen to serve H+H Bagels – SCORE! We sat and enjoyed a yummy snack and coffee.

Taken with my camera phone:

Thanks to Amy Rogalski for mentioning me on her blog today!

Since Mardi Gras, Fletcher has been pretty obsessed with drums. He has 1 marching type of drum – ya know, the type you wear around your neck. It was raining this past weekend and we decided to take him to a music store and see if he liked the full drum set. Unfortunately, they didn’t have kids drums, but he did get to sit at a full drum set and bang away. See video below: